Predicting the Causal Effects of Formal Employees’ Healthcare Seeking Behaviors on Attitudes Towards Ethiopia’s Social Health Insurance Scheme

Abstract

This thesis poses the question: do the healthcare seeking behaviors of formal sector employees have an impact on their attitude and support of Ethiopia’s plan to create a social health insurance scheme? Specifically, would a formal sector employee who typically uses private healthcare or is unsatisfied with their healthcare treatment be more likely to oppose the creation of a social health insurance scheme? The attitudes towards social health insurance, probability of seeking private healthcare, and probability of being satisfied with the treatment are modeled using four separate probit functions that uncover these likelihoods given the formal sector worker’s socioeconomic, demographic, health status, employment, and regional characteristics. The main findings of this paper are that private healthcare utilization increases the probability that a formal sector employee would oppose the implementation of social health insurance in Ethiopia, whereas treatment satisfaction decreases this probability. Additionally, this paper finds that income has no effect on attitudes towards social health insurance. Subsequent research is required to confirm whether private healthcare utilization has no significant impact on an individual’s treatment satisfaction.